The Journal
by to2llyuntraceable
Summary: When Team RWBY finds about Blake's past as a White Fang member, Blake doesn't stick around to see their responses. Alone, and without an identity or future, she decides to write a journal marking down her slow road to change. Can she put the pieces of her life back together? Or will she give up on life entirely?
1. Day 0

Day 0

It's 4 am. It's 4 am and I'm on a ghost train, and the city of Vale is disappearing behind me. My face is plastered to the window, and I'm smudging the glass with my fingers, tracing the outline of the skyline. Gods, it hurts to look, but I can't tear myself away. This is the last of my old life I'm ever going to see. There's a pit in my stomach, the epicenter of my shame, and its slowly leaking through the rest of my body. I remember small details, like Ruby intently modifying her scythe, or Yang's awful puns, and its like all of that negative emotion is washing over me, like the pit in my stomach has overflowed and now I'm soaked in my own self pity. They're gone now, and so is Weiss, and JNPR, and so are my parents and Ilia and everyone in the White Fang. You'd think that with practice abandoning people would get easier.

It's 4am, and this journal is staring back at me, and so is an old drunk who is clearly wondering what this girl toting a katana is doing on a train to nowhere. And I'm trying to find some symbolism in that, in everything, because otherwise why am I here? There should be gray lighting, and "Everybody Hurts" should be blasting over my silent tears. I've hit a new rock bottom, lower than the other ones. Why haven't I bounced back yet? Where's my happy ending? Why do I feel like I've been dropped from my own story?

It's 4 am, and its dawning on me that life doesn't wait for anybody to figure things out on their own. I'm directionless, floating from place to place, unrealistic grandiose plans in my head I'll never achieve. And now my future is completely blank, no progress made in any direction, and I'm so scared, it might break me. I'd almost rather be a cat, just for the emotional stability. I'm not a Huntress, I'm not a freedom fighter, I'm a fuck-up with nowhere to go, that last vestiges of my identity completely disappeared behind pitch black mountains.

It's 4 am, and I'm staking my life on this journal, one last hollow promise to myself to get better. I hope matters just a little bit more because its written down. Gods know I can't trust my own word anymore. And I'll take the first step towards change, that vague ideal that always seems to elude people like me. It's the easiest step but it's still so hard: complete honesty. My name is Blake Belladonna, and I'm a coward, a self-centered self-loathing mess of a Faunus, and a former terrorist. And when my friends figured this out, I left without saying good-bye. In the end, they'd be better off not knowing me. And I don't want that to be true anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

Day 1

I made my return to Menagerie today. I had nowhere left to go, my parents are the only ones who still care in my wellbeing. I was dreading that moment, asking them to step back in my life after years of radio silence. And then to just lay it all bare, to have to open up, it frightens me. When I left for the White Fang, I didn't know if I ever wanted come back. But I never wanted to come back a disappointment.

There was a moment, standing at their door, that I wondered what would happen if I just started running and never stopped. If could check out of this new life before I had to deal with any of the consequences, if I could live without having to deal with the shame of being a screw-up. I'd drift from place to place, no responsibility, no consequences, no one to look down on me or be proud of me, just me. But that would have been incredibly cowardly. I'm trying not to be that person anymore.

Dad wasn't home, but Mom opened up the door, and I could see this kaleidoscope of emotion, like her brain was experiencing them all at once and her expression was struggling to keep up. And then she hugged me. And this dam holding back all my anxieties, keeping everything internal, it collapsed. I stayed there, listening to Mom fuss over me, and all I could think about was how nice it was to feel loved.

There will be anger tomorrow, and questions that need to be answered about why I'm back, and where my life is going to go. I don't deserve their love, much less their forgiveness. There's so much work still left to do, and the challenge is so daunting. But those are all tomorrow's questions. Today there is just relief./p


End file.
